People seem to lose the use of their native wit when they consider the origins of words. That idiot’s sorting office, the Internet, has a well-intentioned site (at io.com/gibbonsb/words.words.words.html) edited by Gibbons Burke that discusses nautical terms used by Patrick O’Brian, who, Mr Burke remarks, uses expressions ‘in a way that allows the reader to make the connection between a familiar phrase in everyday language with its marine heritage’. But when I read Patrick O’Brian’s books three or four years ago, I was struck by how often his etymologies are wrong.
A contributor to Mr Burke’s site quotes a sentence in supposed explanation of the phrase ‘the cat is out of the bag’: ‘Vowles drew the cat from its red baize bag, phlegmatically took up his stance, and as the ship reached the height of her roll he laid on the first stroke.’
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